The present invention relates to a textile manufactured article for contact fastener, as well as to a method and to an equipment for manufacturing it.
The so-said contact fasteners, which comprise a hooking part and a hooked part, commonly denominated as the "male" part and, respectively, the "female" part, are known. Both these parts of a contact closure are constituted by textile manufactured articles, one of which is formed by a textile support provided with peduncles protruding from one side of the support, and which may have different shapes, e.g., a mushroom shape, a hook shape, a harpoon shape, or the like, and the other one if formed by a textile support provided with slots protruding from one side of the support. The peduncles of the "male" manufactured article are generally constituted by monofilaments of a thermoplastic material, and the slots of the "female" manufactured article are constituted by multifilaments. Both these textile products are normally manufactured on looms, in particular on ribbon looms, and are formed by textile interlacements of warp yarns with weft yarns.
In the use of these contact fasteners, a "male" manufactured article is superimpsed upon a "female" manufactured article, and the peduncles of the "male" manufactured article are caused to get hooked with the slots of the "female" manufactured article by compression. In order to open the contact fastener, it is necessary to disengage the peduncles of the "male" manufactured article from the slots of the "female" manufactured article, and during this step the peduncles and the slots undergo a strong pull action, which tends to make them come out from their respective textile supports.
In order to prevent this coming out, the textile manufactured articles which constitute these contact fasteners are usually submitted to a special and momentous operation of glueing or sizing, during which the textile manufactured articles are coated with resins of various natures which, by crosslinking due to the action of heat, generate on, and inside, the textile support, a continuous film which binds and fixes the peduncles, and, respectively, the slots, to the textile support, by means of a chemical bond. Such sizing, besides this function, serves to also give the textile manufactured article a certain hand, as demanded by the market, i.e., a certain greater consistency.
The sizing which must be carried out in an operative step following, and distinct from, the production of the textile manufactured article on the loom, causes a productive complication with additional costs, and it is clear that if such a step could be avoided, a considerable reduction in total product cost would be achieved.
On the other side, it is also well-known that all the plastics films obtained from a process of crosslinking of polymers, and/or by means of other methods, are subject to aging, due to a depolymerization caused by oxidation processes induced by environmental agents, and by U.V. light. Furthermore, in the instant case, such films are also prone to breakages in their continuity, because of mechanical stresses, in particular owing to the mechanical stresses which are due to the strong tear action for the contact fasteners are subjected to during their usage, as well as to peeling off due to the washes with soap and/or solvents.
Therefore, a main purpose of the present invention is to provide a textile manufactured article for contact fastener, wherein such drawbacks are overcome, in particular a "male" manufactured article, but, possibly, also a "female" manufactured article, wherein the hooking elements, and respectively the hooked elements are sufficiently linked and bonded to the respective textile support, without any sizing being provided.
A further purpose of the invention is to propose a method and an equipment for the realization of such a sizing-free textile manufactured article, in particular of a "male" manufactured article for contact fastener.